Thaw
by amberpire
Summary: - and to him, I'm human, and that's more than I've been to most people. ;Male!Crona/Stein; Oneshot. Fluff.


**A/N:** _This was all fueled by the last episode, in which Crona is wearing Stein's jacket. I almost cried with happiness._

_Anyway, short fluff awaits you!_

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><p>My mother is dead.<p>

I don't know why it's that thought that knocks me over, but it does. My knees hit the floor with a slam, the breath rattling out of me. I'm cold. I'm so cold. I rub my arms, hands clenching around my bony elbows and I just want to sink into the floor and press my forehead to the cement and just ... just, something.

"Crona, are you all right?"

I blink hard. My mother is dead. My mother is _dead_. Lady Medusa is dead and I'm still alive and my mother is gone.

A warm hand rests on my shoulder. I close my eyes and I'm shaking, my back trembling and I'm still so sore and moving hurts, makes everything hurt. The bandages under my clothes are tight and my torso feels like it just got punctured and, well, it did, so that makes sense. But I don't want to move anymore. I'm cold and I'm hurting and I just want to lay here in the corridor and sleep. My body relaxes at the mere idea - sleep. I could sleep for days, I bet. I could drown in a bed right now and close my eyes and sleep away all of this; Medusa, the kishin, all of it. Gone. Sleep. Dreaming.

"Do you want me to take you back to the infirmary?"

My eyes crack open and blink at the floor. It's kind of fuzzy and maybe I should go back. That means a bed. That means being able to go back to sleep. But I have to keep going, I have to make sure Maka's okay.

"Maka ..." I breathe, lifting my head slowly as a knee bends into my vision, resting on the floor before me. I tremble as the olive eyes of Dr. Stein hover in front of me, peering over the circular rim of his glasses.

"We have to keep going, Crona. If you want to see her, you've gotta get up."

I chew the inside of my lip. I can't believe he can even look at me. I shake my head slowly, a choked sob tearing its way out of my throat. "Why ... why are you being so nice to me? Didn't they tell you what I did? Don't you know that I ... I was so horrible and ... it was my fault ..." I'm so cold. I rub my arms again, my head sagging once more. Why isn't he mad at me? I put the snake in Ms. Marie's drink, I made the madness in him spiral out of control, I made him run away. It was my fault, and he's helping me - he patched me up and taken me here and why isn't he hitting me? Screaming? Why doesn't he hate me?

"Medusa forced you to do it, Crona. It wasn't your fault." His voice is soft. Gentle, like if he speaks too loud it'll break me. But I want him to break me - I hurt him. I _hurt_ him.

I shiver, teeth clattering, and Dr. Stein said that was because of the blood loss but I didn't know I would be this cold, like I'm freezing from the inside out and I just want to lay here. I start to fall again so I can curl up on the floor and close my eyes and sleep this all away - the betrayal and the lies and my dead mother and hurting Dr. Stein - it can all go away if I close my eyes and keep them closed long enough, right? That's my only real escape, in my subconscious. Ragnarok can't get me there. Medusa can't get me there, not the kishin, not my wrongs. Nothing, only a big black nothing and soft tufts of dreams of better, brighter things. It's always better. It's always warm.

Two hands are on my shoulders now. I open my eyes, panting as I look up. Dr. Stein is pushing me forward, my back straight, still cradled on my knees. His face is sober and soft, eyes carefully dancing over me. Medusa mentioned once that I shouldn't have trusted him in the first place because the madness he spun into was already nestled in him somewhere - she had said that he wanted to dissect me. Do experiments. It had scared me at first, but now ... the way he's looking at me, I can't ... I can't imagine. His eyes are kind and his hands are soft and he's not looking at me like I'm a traitor, even though I am - was - and to him, I'm human, and that's more than I've been to most people.

"Maka needs you right now, Crona." His fingers are on my cheek, his eyes reassuring. Maka does need me. She's my first real friend, my true friend, my best friend, and she needs me right now. But everything's rushing up all at once - my dead mother and Dr. Stein and the black, poisoned guilt chewing at me from the inside, trying to gnaw its way out, like it wants to paint on my skin all of the horrible things I've been. Traitor, traitor, liar, stealer, _traitortraitortraitor_.

My mouth falls open but I don't know what to say, the wires that are supposed to keep my body in order and doing the right things plagued by my black blood. I can feel the slight grip I have on my sanity start to loosen, slipping away by my guilt, poison sloshing up my insides. "I'm cold," I say, teeth hammering together, and then Stein starts shuffling. I glance up, frowning as I watch his arms shrug off his jacket. I swallow, tensing somewhat as he drapes the warm, white garment around my shoulders.

I've always been a crier, since I was a kid. I just can't help it; I can't handle things. I can't handle anything. I've never been able to dam up my feelings; they feel the need to liquefy and pour out of my face. I'm a toy without all the right parts - I don't do anything right, I constantly malfunction, and whether or not I can be repaired is really questionable at this point, but there's Maka, who pulled me out of the desert, and here's Dr. Stein, willing to patch me back together when I do break.

And I realize, with a hard blink, tears falling out, that people care about me, and it's terrifying.

I swallow and start to shake, my fingers curling around the edges of his white coat, littered in stitches. It smells like him, like medical equipment and needles and maybe that scares people but it's the smell of help, of him bending over me as I faded in and out of consciousness, it's the smell of him fixing me up so I didn't bleed black to death. I bury my fists in my eyes for several moments and I can still feel him bent in front of me.

He forgave me - no, he didn't forgive me, because he doesn't think I did anything wrong to begin with, that there's nothing to forgive. Even though I put the snake there inside him and it was my hand that dropped it in Ms. Marie's coffee and I walked it over there and it was _me_ - I knew what I was doing, and even if I cried and tore myself apart afterward, even though I still am now, I still did it.

But Medusa was the puppeteer. I was the doll being tugged by the strings.

He gasps in my ear when I hug him. It isn't even so much hugging as it is latching onto him like I'm drowning and he's a buoy. My fingers curl in the stitches of his shirt, my face in his neck, tears slipping over his skin. He's tense beneath me but I just can't help it - Maka hugged me once, and the way it felt when she did was like fireworks and explosions - of the good kind.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so so _sorry_." I chant the words into the darkness of his neck, rivers coursing out of my eyes.

His arms rest tentatively on my back. My arms are chains, locked around him, and as he stands he pulls me with him. My feet dangle off the floor and his mouth is by my ear, brushing over my coral hair. "Stop blaming yourself for something you didn't do." He touches the back of my head. "You're a good kid, Crona. And I know you don't believe it right now, but it's true, and you have me and Maka and the others to remind you as often as you need to be."

I sniffle, blinking into his neck. I don't want to sleep anymore and it feels like his lab coat has thawed me out. I'm not so cold anymore. I pull back and Dr. Stein lowers, my feet bracing against the ground again. He tugs the coat securely over my shoulders, a small smile playing with his lips. His hand rests on the top of my head, threading through my hair and pulling back the fringe, our eyes meeting.

"Okay?" He perks a brow over his glasses.

I take a deep breath and my chest still hurts but Dr. Stein fixed me, and I'm not going to die like my mother because Maka needs me and I'm a good kid. At least, I hope I am. I hope I can be after all of this.

I take his hand. It surprises him, the doctor casting curious eyes at me. Even though my foot shakes, I take the first step forward.

"Okay."

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><p><strong>AN:** _Who knows? I might do something more ~romantic~ with these two in the future._

_Reviews are much appreciated!_


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